I don’t know where or why it happened, but at some point in the modern era, musicals suffered some sort of dissociative episode and splintered into two separate factions – the viscerally entertaining dance movie genre (highlighted by my beloved Step Up series, and no, I assure you I’m not joking) and the movie musical. While Hollywood specialized in all-singing, all-dancing spectaculars in its heyday that featured performers both golden-throated and nimble of foot, for whatever reason we’ve determined that we can only have one or the other in our modern era. This is the problem that vexes me with Into the Woods; Disney’s new adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical directed by Rob Marshall, a filmmaker whose Chicago was a stage adaptation that I found quite involving cinematically. For a movie aimed at exposing the thorny undergrowth that runs beneath the stories we end with “happily ever after,” it is completely inert dramatically, despite game performances, and plays extremely flat as a musical due to uninspired staging that robs most of its musical numbers of any vitality.
There was immense concern upon the initial news of this adaptation that in the hands of Disney, the sharp edges of Sondheim’s music and James Lapine’s book, and it turns out those worries were pretty well-founded. It’s not that the film excises the dark emotional content of the second act of the play (although there are plenty of choice bits and bobs lopped off the back end), it’s that the film chooses to soft pedal these moments almost to the point of incoherence. For some reason the film has gone ahead with a PG rating, as though this is something children will be tugging on their parents shirt sleeves and clamoring for this holiday season, which has the unfortunate side effect of forcing the adaptation to elide many of its more tragic moments (to the point where I genuinely didn’t realize some of the characters were no longer with us).
Structurally the adaptation is a bit wonky too, understandably having to trim the running time, so the focus sticks firmly with the Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) throughout, to the point where most of the other characters (especially Lilla Crawford’s Red Riding Hood and Anna Kendrick’s Cinderella, not to mention the almost nonexistent Rapunzel as played by Mackenzie Mauzy) feel like brief interludes instead of interlocking parts in a well-oiled machine. And the breathless pace of the first half of the movie gives way to a measured, lugubrious conclusion that makes sense given the characters have become bogged down and lost in the eponymous woods, but just plays slow given the film’s reluctance to commit to these more tragic elements.
The great thing about making a movie is not being beholden to the format that preceded it, and on that account Into the Woods feels weirdly tethered to a visual format (the stage play) that does not play to cinema’s strengths. Musical numbers like Cinderella’s “On the Steps of the Palace” or the Witch’s lament to Rapunzel “Stay With Me” have to rely almost entirely on the lyrical content due to the feeling they were shot before a live studio audience. Even the film’s most vital and energetic numbers (the Princely duet “Agony” and the Wolf’s seductive “Hello, Little Girl”) owe more to the performers committing whole-hog than Marshall unleashing some virtuosic imagery on the audience.
It’s a shame too, as those musical numbers prove there are performers here clearly in tune with the tone of the piece. Incoming Late Show host James Corden and Emily Blunt make for a sympathetic duo as the Baker and his wife, shouldering the brunt of the emotional content, Corden especially making the most of a character haunted by his father’s influence and determined and fearful not to make the same mistakes. Meryl Streep’s Witch and especially Chris Pine’s Cinderella’s Prince are the standout performers, livening up the proceedings anytime they’re on screen, understanding the storybook origins of their characters and allowing for their dimensionality to creep out only in measured bursts. The rest of the cast doesn’t feel like they’re given enough time to resonate (Johnny Depp’s Wolf just looks like his Mad Hatter character is attending a furry convention, so perhaps it’s best that we’re only treated to a few minutes of his character) despite many of them having equal or more screen time than the previously mentioned actors.
I realize this review has consisted almost exclusively of me complaining about elements of the film that didn’t work, but even given that, you can see the hints of a great adaptation peeking out from behind the visual inelegance and structural quandaries. When it comes to the songs, nearly every performer proves overly capable of tackling the material and making it their own (Streep in particular showcases a beautiful voice). However, when Marshall and Disney decided they wanted to venture Into the Woods, I wish they had realized that they aren’t just lovely, but also dark and deep. We’ve been given a film with the visual and thematic depth of a pop-up book that deserved so much more.
